configure XSAN 4 – Yosemite – El Capitan

Situation

You want to connect an OSX 10.10 (Yosemite) or OSX 10.11 (El Capitan) client to your existing StorNext SAN or XSAN. Both OSX versions are XSAN 4 based.

Yosemite’s embedded XSAN version is compatible with SNFS 4.3 & 4.7.
The XSAN version within El-Capitan apparently is only compatible with StorNext 5.x but not with StorNext 4.7 as officially listed in the matrix.

I don’t claim to know it better as the officials from Quantum or Apple but if you look under the hood, the cvversion command returns a 4.3 build. Based on that and the knowledge that many other users have connected their XSAN 4 clients to a SNFS 4.7 based MDC’s without any issues of connectivity or data integrity (would be the worst case ever), it’s up to you to go that path and connect to an existing 4.7 based StorNext MDC and step outside the supported matrix.

Another thing with doesn’t really line up is that the compatibility matrix from Apple and Quantum took over 6 month to be released. El-Capitan was released before StorNext 5 has been official released, which means El-Capitan’s version was already future proofed?

Abstract

XSAN since version 2.3 comes embedded within the OS and doesn’t require a dedicated license anymore. The surprising part here is still the lack of documentation. While Apple keeps changing the configuration quite frequently, the Xsan pane which some users may have used in previous OSX releases is gone, everything will be configured with configuration profiles.

Solution

Continuing with XSAN 4 which is the current version, this blog entry follows the idea to have a complete collection of all the XSAN versions covered beginning with XSAN 1.4 over XSAN 2.3 & 3.0 and XSAN 4.

Some basics upfront:

A metadada network should always be separated (dedicated) to have a low latency communication between the clients and the SNFS/XSAN server. Usually you’d chose a different class C network and have a dedicated NIC installed on your client.

The basic commands you need to verify if the client setup should work are ping, cvadmin and cvlabel.

ping – the simple test if you have a valid IP connectioncvadmin – to verify the connection to the MDCcvlabel – to assure that you see all the LUN’s you need to mount a volume

My MDC reports back at 192.168.12.1 and my client has the metadata IP 192.168.12.5 assigned.

XSAN 1.x – 1.4.1

The downloadable XSAN Administration Guide shows actually what needs to be done, therefore it would be redundant to write it down.

XSAN 1.4.2 – 2.x
XSAN 2.3 – 3.x (OSX 10.7 – 10.9)
XSAN 4 – Yosemite

XSAN 4.x – Yosemite / El Capitan

Installation

This version of XSAN comes with the OS and is doesn’t require any further installation or serial number. With other words, it’s free.

Configuration

You might perform a quick ping test to the MDC to avoid troubleshooting later.ping 192.168.12.1

If you have an existing XSAN 3 configuration, you can simply copy the /Library/Preferenes/Xsan folder to the new client.

The above shows there are is a connection to the MDC (192.168.12.1) with two volumes: san-1 and san-2

Mount all volumes manually to test the installation

mkdir /Volumes/san-1
2. mount -t acfs san-1 /Volumes/san-1
3. repeat as necessary, changing san-1 to the appropriate volume name
4. run a df command to see if the StorNext volumes have been successfully mounted on the client.

Configure the volumes to mount automatically

Mounts in XSAN 2.3 and above are handled in the /Library/Preferences/Xsan/ automount.plist file

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